"Addiction" is a bad word. It implies the user is not in control of themselves.
Anyone who makes products want users of our product to keep coming back as though they are addicted, but not actually addicted.
Anyone who makes products want users of our product to keep coming back as though they are addicted, but not actually addicted.
Can you explain the distinction? I am not seeing it. If I keep refreshing a product page to get another dopamine hit, am I addicted or not addicted but appearing so to your metrics?
I think apps are a different beast. They (generally, with few exceptions) want their users to be addicted. An addicted user is more likely to come back than one that gets a need met. Once that need is fulfilled, they leave.
If companies actually wanted to fill people's needs they wouldn't use dark patterns like having to call to cancel, spamming them without their consent, switching opt-out choices back with updates, etc. Because they use these dirty tricks, it's hard to believe they have the users best interest in mind. They don't. They just want the line to go up.
Brewers want people to want beer, and to perhaps puritans, that desire could appear as “addicted”. However, brewers don’t want addicts - liver failure, destitution, death, are all things I doubt a brewer wants to see in their consumer base because you can’t drink if you don’t have a liver, don’t have money, or don’t have life.
Did I, as a child, think my dad was addicted to alcohol because I saw him drink everyday? I did, that’s the appearance it gave. Was he? Not to the clinical point of addiction, technically - he functioned, maintained relationships and a job, and wasn’t more than occasionally emotionally abusive. He fit the type of customer GP seems to talk about - appearing to be addicted but not wholly, truly addicted.
Once you're thinking about how to keep a user coming back, you're in the mutually adversarial design space, whatever language is used to more pleasantly redecorate that reality.
there are other industries who's entire business revovles around selling to addicts, why would MS of all companies suddenly balk at that line?
There's a race and tug-of-war to frame how interaction with apps works. The addiction word has a strong "think of the children" energy and I would expand any company to want to have their app tagged with the term.
Of course, what exactly "addicted" means in the context of interacting with a program really pretty fuzzy but yeah, "users not in control of themselves" is perhaps the biggest implication (and not necessarily false, mind you). Of course, this is a matter of both degree and social context.
If only we had a social dialog about the real meaning of things labeled addictive, perhaps their terrible impact could be mitigated. But hey, I guess we get policing and moral panics instead.